A man loses his wife only to meet someone resembling him but she is murdered by someone....who is it and why? This story will have you guessing...who it is ?

Submitted:Mar 24, 2013
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Sometimes life snatches away the people you
love the most and there is nothing that you can do but mourn
their passing away. But sometimes there are people whom you meet
who remind you of those dear ones that have passed away only they
are an entirely different individual. It was a winter morning in
November 2001 that my dear wife passed away from cancer. I had
buried her with tears in my eyes. And I had been unable to get
over her death for a long time. I slipped in and out of
depression and life suddenly felt so awful without my dear
Melissa who had been my wife for a decade. It was a time when I
felt that nature could be so cruel. Why? Why did she have to die
so young? She had been only thirty four years old. And she had
left behind a young daughter named Sarah who turned three in
November of 2001. Of course, it was my mother who now looked
after her.

It was during a session of group therapy for my
depression that I ran into a young woman named Mandy who
strangely resembled my dead wife a lot. Infact it was so weird
that her voice and mannerisms were exactly like Melissas. The way
she walked, talked and spoke were so much like that of my late
wife. She had noticed me staring at her and one day after the
psychotherapy was over she introduced herself to
me.

She too suffered from intense anxiety and
depression. However she had some chemical imbalance that had
triggered her problems. I had told her about my late wife and how
she resembled her. She felt sorry for my loss. At twenty six, she
was still unmarried and looking for someone. So we started dating
one another. By strange coincidence her date of birth was the
same as that of Melissas except she had been born in 1975. Her
parents had passed away in an accident over three years ago and
she was living with her elder brother who was a successful
banker. Before she had fell ill, she had completed her Bachelors
in Business Administration from University of California,
Irvine.

During the course of our dating one another, I
found her to be someone who was quite loving. Though she did have
mood swings but I had fallen in love with her. Was it because she
reminded me of my late wife? Perhaps so ! However I knew very
little about her past and I was not prepared to marry at the
moment.

I received a call from my psychotherapist one
day and she wanted to meet me in person at my place. It was a
strange request but I agreed. At about three in the evening on
the 3rdof
January 2002, she reached my house situated in Newport Beach. I
opened the front gate and let her in.

Dr. Susan John was a pleasant looking woman. I
asked her to make herself at home. She soon sat in a leather
recliner placed in the drawing room and stared hard at me pausing
for a while perhaps before speaking to me. What I heard from her
left me in a deep state of shock. Mandys brother had reported her
to be missing for the past two days. So far there had been no
trace of her whereabouts. And the police were looking to question
anyone and everyone who knew her. Of course I was not worried
about the police interviewing me but about what had happened to
Mandy.

That night I tossed and turned in my bed
thinking about what had happened to her. Had she runaway? But if
she had why had she done so? What if someone had murdered her? I
had to take a sleeping pill to fall asleep. And during the course
of sleep I had a nightmare that involved finding Mandy dead and
people mourning her passing away. It was a dream so very vivid
and clear. When I woke up, I felt quite upset and anxious. I had
turned on the television to hear the morning news and I was
sipping a cup of tea when there was a breaking news segment.
According to the news anchor, a body of a young woman who had
been identified as Mandy had washed up at the Laguna
Beach.

When
I saw, a footage of the dead person, my eyes filled up with
tears. What had happened to Mandy? It couldnt be, no it couldnt
be ! The coroner had found lacerations and cuts all over her
body. He had ruled her death as possible homicide.

For a while, I could not believe what had
happened. I was shocked. It was a day later that I attended her
funeral along with the psychotherapist. A number of patients in
the same group as I, showed up to pay their respects. I looked
around and my eyes fell upon her brother Justin Hillman who was a
banker by profession and still unmarried. A number of relatives
of Mandy were also present; people I had never seen
before.

After the funeral, I had drove over to the Los
Angeles Police Department because Chief police detective James
Franklin wanted to have an interview with me regarding my
relationship with the deceased. I walked into a plush room
located on the second floor. A sharp looking individual sat
behind the desk. He rose up and pointed me in the direction of a
chair place opposite his.

" So Mr. Samuel Burns" he said " What was the
nature of your relationship with the deceased?".

I told him all about my wifes death and how I
had been attracted to Mandy because she had resembled my wife a
lot. By the time, I had finished I was nearly in tears. However I
managed to control myself. I looked at the detective and asked
them if they had found the murder weopan and he replied in the
negative. According to him, the forensic team had been down at
the beach and they had not been able to find much. However Mandys
body had been exhumed and the forensic team had found over
seventy different cuts over her body. She had been brutally
murdered. And guessing from the depth of the wounds and the
multiple stab wounds, whoever had committed the murder seemed to
be a madman.

During the next month, chief detective James
Franklin set a reward of over 10,000 dollars for the men or women
who had any information that may help in the arrest of those who
had murdered Mandy. An interview was done with each living
relation and friend of Mandy. The detective learnt that Mandy had
been eighteen when her parents had passed away in a road
accident. However her elder brother Justin, who was fifteen years
her elder and a banker had become her guardian. It was also
established that the relatives of Mandy and Justin were not very
close to them.

Then
Mandy had fallen in love with the son of a rich businessman but
he had been unfortunately murdered by someone. His murderer had
never been found and neither was the reason why he had been
murdered in the first place. Mandy had then fallen victim to
anxiety and depression. But why had she been murdered so brutally
and by who?

James Hoffman, a rich and powerful magnate, had
discovered that his son was in love with a commoner named Mandy.
He had wanted him to marry the daughter of a rich businessman to
further his business but alas his son Henry had been headstrong
and had refused to do what James had wanted. But Adolf Smith, the
person James wanted to do business with had said that the
business parnership would only happen if her daughter would marry
Henry. James Hoffman was quite bad tempered when he was angry and
on a Saturday night he had been quite drunk and in a bad mood
when Henry walked in. They had had a heated argument over Henrys
refusal to marry Adolf Smiths' son. And James Hoffman had shot
his son dead in a fit of anger. Because James was divorced, he
lived alone. He had always been a loner.

There
had been no one home that night. And no one had heard the shots
fired. James Hoffman was paralyzed with fear when he had realized
what he had done. He had then used a razor shaped knife to chop
the body into little pieces before he placed them in a garbage
bag and he had then gone to the backyard where he had dug a deep
hole before placing the garbage bag in that hole and covering it.
He had also placed the murder weopan, a Baretta Nano 9mm in that
hole. James could not believe what he had done. He had then
lodged a report with the LAPD and told them that his son had not
returned home that night. The detectives at LAPD headed by James
Franklin tried to find the whereabouts of James Hoffman but they
found none. Deep in his heart, James Hoffman had bore a deep
grudge against Mandy. Had it not been for her, his son might
still be alive and well.

Mandy had been worried when she had not been
able to get through to Henry. He had told her about how his dad
had been hounding him to marry someone else. When three days
passed by without being able to get through to Henry she had been
very worried. She had drove over to his house. It was a Saturday
evening when she pulled into the driveway of the Hoffman
Estate.

She had been met at the entrance by James
Hoffman. He had never met her before and it was only when she
introduced herself as Mandy that he realized who she was. He had
called her inside and made her at home. As he poured her a glass
of wine, he told her how Henry had been missing and how he had
contacted the police and lodged a complaint. Three days had
passed by and the LAPD had no leads what had happened to him.
Mandy could not believe what she heard. Her sixth sense told her
that something bad had happened to Henry and that James was to
blame but she could substantiate nothing. As three months passed
by and there had been no sign and news about Henry, Mandy had
become increasingly anxious and depressed. She had slipped in a
deep depression and had been undergoing therapy for her anxiety
and depression. And she had even visited the LAPD where she had
met detectives James Franklin and Steve Wilson. She told them
about her relationship with Henry and how her his father had been
pressurizing him to marry someone elses daughter in order for
them to merge their businesses and form a
partnership.

The
detectives didnt have any leads or clues to go on as yet. So they
paid a visit to Adolf Smith one day to verify Mandys story and
Adolf Smith told them that what they heard had been true. Later
on they had interviewed various employees working for James
Hoffman. And what they had learnt was that we was an ambitious
person, someone with an anger problem, someone quite secretive
and an introvert. The management would not deny or confirm, the
news about James Hoffman wanting to merge the business with
another one.

James Hoffman had been suffering from bouts of
insomnia and an increased guilty consciousness. He would see
himself shooting his son in his dreams every night or burying him
in the backyard. Why? Why had he done it. And one day sitting in
his leather recliner he had taken the pistol and shot himself in
the mouth. He never woke up. A maid who came to clean the place
found the dead body. The death of James Hoffman had spread like a
brush fire throughout the country.

It
had been during this time that I had first learnt that Mandy
seemed to be attached with a young rich man by the name of Henry
Hoffman. Mandy had disclosed the affair to me. And I had been
secretly jealous of her. I had not disclosed to anyone that I
suffered from a multiple personality disorder. There were two
sides to me. One was the caring and conscientious me full of love
and charm. And the other one that sometimes emerged was a very
evil person that would go to any lengths to get what he wanted.
It was only after Melissas death that I had developed this
malady. I knew not when this other part of me would take hold of
me. And there was so little that I knew about this other side of
me. Mandy had come over to my apartment and disclosed to me about
her affair with Henry Hofman. I felt shocked. How could she have
kept all of this from me? I suddenly felt that I would be losing
her. And I tried pleading with her telling her that I loved her
more than any other person but she was not listening. I knew not
when the other side of me took a possession of my mind and
thoughts. But when I recovered I was holding a butchers knife
dripping with blood. Melissa lay infront of me, her eyes staring
upwards and lifeless. She lay naked with multiple cuts and
lacerations all across her body. Infact there were so many stab
wounds that it was hard to count.

I vomited twice or thrice afterwards and I was
not sure of how this had happened and why it had happened. But
there lay my Melissa, lifeless and stabbed so many times by me.
Oh God ! What had I done? The tiled Kitchen floor had to be
washed. I had to dispose of this body as soon as possible. Using
a strong detergent and mop, I had spent the next thirty minutes
washing the floor.

I had sprayed a deoderant many times before
putting the body in a garbage bag and placing it in the rear of
my Ford Mustang. It was about ten at night that I had driven down
to the deserted beach and dumped the body near the sea. What I
hadnot noticed was a hobo watching me from a distance. He had
taken down my car plate number and called the police. I had
driven away thinking I was safe.

When I reached home, I saw the murder weopan,
the butcher knife lying there. And I had washed it thoroughly
before putting it back. It had been six in the morning when I got
the shock of my life. About seven police cars pulled into the
driveway and detective James Franklin walked out. The game was
over. A hobo at the beach had witnessed what I had done and
reported my license plate number.

The
defense team built a case about my Multiple Personality Disorder
but I was sentenced to psychiatric care and forty years behind
bars.